Why Kickstarter Class Is Free to Writers…

Started in October 2019…

Master Business Class was happening and Loren L. Coleman and I were sitting on the suite’s balcony looking out over Las Vegas with about fifteen other writers in a large circle just talking publishing business. And then Loren asked if anyone had done a Kickstarter for a book.

Loren knew I had done more than ten and he had done a number for his gaming company and a book. One writer raised their hand and said, “I did one, only made five thousand, so haven’t done another yet.”

I think I rolled out of my chair onto the ground and Loren almost tipped over backwards. “Only five thousand!!!”

So we discovered that almost none of the 60 writers at that Master Business Class had done a Kickstearter. So Loren and I started doing a lot of research into the fiction area of Kickstarter and discovered that almost no writers used it. And unlike the gaming area, which was the biggest area, fiction and publishing was a forgotten little corner of mostly failed campaigns.

So Loren and I set out to try to get more and more writers doing fiction Kickstarters. And do them right. Because the more writers who use the Fiction designation, the more attention Kickstarter would give it.

We knew it would take years and years, but we liked tilting…

We knew to really push it over the top, it would not only need a lot of writers doing campaigns, but they would need to do them so they funded. So we started the free class on Teachable. I recorded what we came up with and then Loren did a how-to-book for writers.

The fiction area would also need a few big names, so we passed the word as best we could, but all the big names we knew were still stuck firmly in traditional publishing. Until Brandon Sanderson.

And that was the final thing, along with a lot of fiction writers launching good campaigns, that made Kickstarter pay attention. In fact, they now have two full-time employees focusing only on publishing. And those great people go to writer’s conferences to talk up Kickstarter and help writers learn how to do it correctly.

Since then Loren has done a 10 million dollar gaming campaign and a number of ten thousand book campaigns. And here at WMG we just keep firing along with our campaigns, as I talked about last night.

But it was that Master Business Class in 2019 after hours conversation that got things going. There are now 1,500 plus writers who have signed up for the free campaign on Teachable to get the basics.

And as I have said from the start, I will be glad to look over a campaign before you launch.

So that answers the questions I got today about the reason Loren and I did that free class and I still help writers with their campaigns. Because it helps us all.

Study other fiction campaigns, back the ones you like, and then build one of your own. It really is a lot of fun.